Dhoni's retirement news, along with Suresh Raina.

 

 Former India captain and two-time World Cup winner, the legendary wicketkeeper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket on Saturday (August 15) via an Instagram post.

"Thanks a lot for ur love and support throughout. From 1929 hrs consider me as Retired (sic)", was written in his post of the formal announcement.

Did Dhoni announce his retirement today?

Yes, he announced his retirement from international cricket but will play the upcoming IPL 2020 in UAE. He will not play for the Indian team but will certainly head the Chennai Superkings team in IPL 2020.

The Chennai Super Kings captain was spotted earlier today arriving in Chennai for the training camp before they took off to middle-east.

Dhoni's retirement news came as a shock to his fans as they will miss the helicopter shot in blue Indian Jersey.

Dhoni had quit Test cricket in 2014 after the Melbourne Test in Australia and had handed over ODI and T20I captaincy to Kohli in 2017.

In nearly 16 years at the highest level, Dhoni-led Indian team through its most successful era and has the 2007 T20 WC, 2011 ODI World Cup, and the 2013 Champions Trophy under his hat.

Dhoni's stats on retiring

Dhoni's 350th ODI was his last for India, wherein he finished with a 72-ball 50 against New Zealand at the 2019 World Cup which could not prove sufficient for India. Dhoni, who finished with 10,773 runs at an average of 50.57 in ODIs, is the fifth Indian to surpass the 10k-run mark in the 50-over format. The wicketkeeper-batsman also has 229 ODI sixes - the most for an Indian batsman.

Dhoni became the Indian captain in 2007 and has won 55 percent of the 200 games he captained the national side (110 wins, 74 defeats, 5 tied, 11 NR). His 200th ODI captaincy assignment came in the Asia Cup 2018 encounter against Afghanistan after Rohit Sharma - the designated skipper for that tournament - was rested for the game, which eventually ended in a tie.

In T20Is, Dhoni played 98 games, scoring over 1617 runs at a strike rate of 126.13. More importantly, he led India to victory in the T20 WC in 2007. He has a 58.33 win percentage in T20s, with 42 victories in 72 games as the chief.

Dhoni's retirement came into talk after his bad run in ODIs in the last 2 years but he proved himself many times including the World cup semifinal 2019 and his excellent captaincy is undisputed by the IPL titles he has held till now.

Besides being India's most successful captain in ODIs and T20s, Dhoni with his excellent wicketkeeping skills earned the repo of being one of the finest stumpers in the world in the last few years. With 829 dismissals across formats in international cricket (634 catches, 195 stumpings), Dhoni finishes third on the list of wicketkeepers with most dismissals, only Mark Boucher (998) and Adam Gilchrist (905) had more dismissals than him.

This was all about Dhoni's retirement news. Thank you to the legend who established Indian supremacy in international cricket and gave us moments to cheer and be proud of.